Orthodoxy Enforced, to a Degree

Fox News reports on a story of a Catholic university that's enforcing orthodoxy, of a sort:

The private Chicago Catholic university recently informed professor Norman Finkelstein that his three courses were canceled after a dispute over tenure that drew charges of anti-Semitism against him.

Critics find issue with Finkelstein, the son of Holocaust survivors, who believes that some Jews have exploited the Holocaust. Finkelstein is the author of five books, including "The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering."

I wish that DePaul University was so zealous in defending the Catholic Faith as it is defending Jewish victimhood. Not too long ago, De Paul started turning heads with it's avant garde Gay Studies program.

"I understand that there's a tension there," says Assistant Prof. Gary Cestaro, the program's director. "Institutions of higher learning, even if they are Catholic, aren't spokespeople for the Vatican," he says. "Like any university, there should be room for free inquiry."

I guess that some inquiry should be more free than others? Or is it that the only kind of free inquiry desired is that inquiry free of Catholic doctrine. What ever happened to Ex Corde Ecclesiae?

Looking over the course offerings and course descriptions for the LGBTQ Studies, I don't see anything that points to a discussion on Catholic doctrine on human sexuality. Maybe the topic will be touched upon at the upcoming "Out There Conference" at DePaul in October. There's a session in the program called “Roman Catholicism and its Teaching on Homosexuality: Past, Present, Future” with James Halstead and Tom Judge from DePaul University, and Patricia Jung, Loyola University Chicago. The rest of the sessions seem to be the usual rah-rah for gay causes.

Halstead's not the most solid bulwark against the prevailing culture, as evidenced by his comment on CNN in regard to pro-abortion politicians and the Eucharist:

"It's precisely the people that are sick or in error that need to be going to communion. It's not a reward. It's a help on the journey."

There are few better ways to tell someone that they are sick or in error by declaring that they are not in communion with the Church, but you won't hear that from Halstead. Patricia Jung, inline skating gold medalist at the 1994 Gay Games, is not a notorious stalwart for true Catholic doctrine either. In her paper, "The Call to Wed: Why Catholics Should Celebrate Same Sex Marriage," Ms. Jung displays her ignorance/disregard for catholic teaching:

"When the church’s long-standing emphasis on the significance of procreativity to marriage is
critically analyzed, it becomes clear that both the church and society should encourage all those so called – whether queer or straight – to wed."

"Critical analysis", in Academe-speak, is code for rationalized dismissal. With Halstead's and Jung's records, it looks like the deck is stacked against any straight, pardon the pun, discussion of Church teaching on human sexuality at this conference.

The Horror

I don't watch TV much, as it's usually a waste of time. It can occasionally be instructive, or so the producers would hope, but you can also learn more about the culture than what the show is actually trumpeting. I happened across a show call 'On The Lot', a reality show about budding film producers having to make short films in different genres. Last night's episode was an excercise in horror films, or so it was announced. The last short was 'Profile' by Mateen, an African-American film student. Just what kind of horror story was it? I'm sure you can guess.

An African-American driver is pulled over by a white cop, and faster than you can say "license and registration, please," the driver is in a bathroom being brutally assaulted by three white cops. Explaining his choice of drama, the filmmaker said he wanted to convey a horror that people could actually relate to.

Here's a horror that would be more helpful for African-Americans:

In 1999, firearm homicide was the number one cause of death for Black men ages 15-34, as well as the leading cause of death for all black 15-24 year olds.[1]

AND

In 1998, 94 percent of the Black murder victims were slain by black offenders.[2]

As much as the brother wants to spin a yarn about evil white cops, the larger horror is still wrought by his own people. While race-agitating shakedown artists keep the focus on the White Devil, the Black auto-genocide of violence, family disintegration and drug use will continue.

Bill Cosby, anathema to the victimhood mafia, proposed a solution on CNN's 'Situation Room':

It's not outrage as much as sadness that Dr. King started us in a winning position with nonviolence and that our youthful people are picking up guns, knives, and voices against each other, against their parents, against the school system, and a great deal of it has to do with the fact that we need to start in pre-K through 12th grade talking to the children in school, in school, because it isn't happening in the neighborhood, about nonviolence and how to solve one's sadness issue that has grown into frustration and then outrage.

For Cosby, it's not just a 'black thing':

The most important thing, Wolf, is, as time goes by, how many of these candidates, like Mr. Martin said, will address the invisible white people who are not graduating from college, who are teenage pregnancy at the age of 13, who are broke, who are looking for subsidy, who are looking at schools that are broken down? It isn't just blacks.

It's the poor. It's the lower economic people, the lower middle economic. And these people have to speak up. They have got to get themselves together. They are the most powerful. You have politicians who care about them, as opposed to some of these other things...

But will anyone in the Black community hear it? Maybe someone can do a film about that?

1. National Center for Health Statistics, 2002
2. FBI Uniform Crime Reports, 1998

What's Next?

Next on Rev. Al's hit list:



Which is easier to criticise than:

Syllogism #70411

If

Al Sharpton is a Christian preacher

And

"Then Peter came and said to Him, "Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?" Jesus said to him, "I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven." (Matt 18:21)

Then

"Don Imus has apologized, and therefore, as a Christian and follower of Jesus, I am bound to forgive him and bear him no ill will." - Al Sharpton

Actually, Rev Al said no such thing. Nothing even close. Here are Sharpton's actual statements:

"I accept his apology, just as I want his bosses to accept his resignation," - Al Sharpton

"I think to say that his statements were racist, as they've said, then that means they should not allow him to come back." - Al Sharpton

Just in case, Al, you don't have a Bible handy, here's a gem for you:

"Then summoning him, his lord said to him, 'You wicked slave, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me.

'Should you not also have had mercy on your fellow slave, in the same way that I had mercy on you?'

"And his lord, moved with anger, handed him over to the torturers until he should repay all that was owed him.

"My heavenly Father will also do the same to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart." (Matt 18:31-34)


BTW, was the Hebrew word for 'Accuser' rendered as 'Satan'?

From A Priest of the Oven God

News Item from CWNews: The Moral Failure of the German Pope

An Op-Ed piece from an angry zionophile, critiquing Benedict XVI's visit to Oświęcim:

The visit was extraneous, annoying and infuriating. The German pope failed to do the most basic thing he should have done at Auschwitz: He failed to kneel next to the ovens, look to the blue skies of the Auschwitz afternoon and ask forgiveness for the murder of six million Jews, in the name of German or the German Catholic church.

I think the writer is actually looking for the Pope, and all others, to kneel in front of the Ovens of Auschwitz, and worship Jewish Victimhood. The dismissal of past mea culpas indicates that the writer does not believe in forgiveness, for the merciful do not ask for an eternal litany of guilt. To ask for such an unending request for pardon betrays the writer's need to have the Catholic Church permanently abased at the feet of his merciless sentiments.

The German pope's apology at Auschwitz, over the graves of a million murdered Jews, should have had a different purpose: To warn against renewed anti-Semitism, and to atone for the sins of the German Catholic church, which in the best-case scenario was silent in the face of the Nazis, and in the more probable one – collaborated with them.

I imagine that there's a dogeared copy of "Hitler's Pope" sitting next to his toilet. There are a multitude of Jews, both living and deceased that would decry the collaboration statement.

The pope made sure to maintain an unnecessary, fictional balance comparing victims of other peoples and nations.

When the communists wanted to minimize the slaughter of Jews at Auschwitz, they spread lies that four million people were killed there. The pope may not have repeated this lie, but took care to emphasize again and again the multi-ethnic makeup of the victims.

Linguistically, this is true. Factually, it is a lie: the fate of Jews at Auschwitz was not the same as other peoples.

Here again, the failure to worship Jewish Victimhood as being predominantly, if not solely, the only suffering there was during the Holocaust.

Yes, times have indeed changed. It's true, pope Ratzinger, Benedict XVI, did not visit Auschwitz as part of the March of the Living. He is not the chief rabbi of Israel. He is the head of the Catholic Church, and Jesus is his God.

But especially in light of his lofty position, he is also a spiritual guide for a billion Catholics worldwide. And what did his visit to Auschwitz tell them? He forgot anti-Semitism, forgot anti-Jewish hatred, forgot the sins of his church and his people and made due with a general denunciation of hatred.

Yes, dear writer, but what you have failed to divine, is that our God, through His Son, Jesus, can forgive sins, so that they are forgotten. The Ovens of Auschwitz have no such inclination.